Перевидите The night fell, the silence was on the moor. It was years since a bird had flown in the dark sky. Two men were sitting by their lonely fire in the wilderness, darkness pumped quietly in their veins and ticked silently in their temples and their wrists.

Firelight gleamed on their wild faces. They listened to each other’s faint breathing.

At last, one man poked the fire with his sword.

«Don’t do that; you’ll give us away!»

«No matter,» said the second man. «The dragon can smell us miles off, anyway. How cold it is! I wish I was back at the castle.»

«It’s death, not sleep, we’re after….»

«Why? Why? The dragon never sets foot in the town!»

«Quiet, fool! He eats men travelling alone from our town to the next!»

«Let them be eaten and let us get home!»

«Wait now; listen!»

The two men sat in silence. They waited for a long time, nothing had happened, nothing was heard, there was only the shake of their horses’ buckles, softly, softly.

«Ah.» The second man sighed. «What a land of nightmares. Everything happens here. God, listen! This dragon, they say his eyes are fire. His breath is white gas; you can see him go across the dark lands. He runs with thunder and kindles the grass. Sheep panic and die insane. Women deliver forth monsters. The dragon’s fury is such that tower walls shake back to dust. His victims, at sunrise, are strewn hither and thither on the hills. How many knights, I ask, have gone for this monster and failed, even as we shall fail?»

«Enough of that!»

«More than enough! Out here I cannot tell what year this is!»

«Nine hundred years since the birth of Jesus.»

«No, no,» whispered the second man, eyes shut. «On this moor is no Time, is only Forever. I feel if I ran back on the road the town would be gone, the people yet unborn, things changed; don’t ask how I know, the moor knows, and tells me. And here we sit alone in the land of the fire dragon. God save us!»

«What’s use? The dragon runs from nowhere; we cannot guess its home. It vanishes in fog, we know not where it goes. Aye, put on our armour, we’ll die well-dressed.»

The second man turned his head.